As-Built Surveys in Albany, CA

Albany's housing stock is modest and remarkably consistent: small pre- and postwar bungalows on small flat lots laid out in a tight grid. What that means for remodels is that there is no slack anywhere. An addition, a second-story pop-up, or an ADU conversion of a garage is designed against tight setbacks where inches genuinely matter, and against original construction that was never as square as it looks. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner documents the whole property in one visit — interior rooms, exterior walls, eave and ridge heights, the detached garage, and the yard between them — as one registered, survey-grade point cloud.

From that cloud we produce the existing-conditions set an architect needs: floor plans, sections, and elevations in DWG/DXF, or a Revit model at LOD 200 or 300 for teams designing in BIM, with the E57/RCP cloud available alongside. Precision pays off twice in Albany. First, inside the house: bungalow walls hide decades of settling and amateur remodels, and scan-true plans prevent the classic surprise where a new kitchen layout assumes two parallel walls that are actually three inches out over the room's length. Second, at the lot line: when the buildable envelope is tight, we pair the as-built with a boundary and topographic survey so the design team knows exactly how much room exists between the existing wall and the setback — measured, not estimated. Lots on the slopes of Albany Hill, the grid's one exception, get topographic context from the same fieldwork.

Later questions — a plate height, a window head, a chimney offset — are answered from the archived cloud without revisiting the house. Where recordable boundary work accompanies an Albany project, filings go through the Alameda County Surveyor and Recorder.